What is Music? Exploring the Universal Language

What is Music, and why is it so soul satisfying?

A hard question to answer. I will try to sketch out the idea below, but the ideas are nebulous and difficult to capture. To begin with, why do we like such a complex way of creation? Where does this desire and need come from when simple words go fill the task? A quick look at the music resource hub only hints at the complexity of the issue.

These are hard questions, but I believe we can answer them if we accept that music fulfills the same needs for ancient man as it does for us today. At its simplest, music is organized sound that combines rhythm, melody, and harmony to communicate emotion and meaning. But that definition only scratches the surface of what music truly is and what it does for us as human beings.

The Human Capacity to Create

If you look at what it means to be human, the first thing that stands out is our ability to create with our language. Our words and our thoughts are almost infinitely flexible and creative. It doesn’t matter if they are in poetry, prose, or music. Across every time period, society, and continent, humans create with words, moving and arranging them into what we consider to be pleasing patterns to match our intent and meaning. Our Sound Mapping tool lets you explore the 3D nature of sound.

The Rhythm of the Heartbeat

Music, however, is a little bit different than poetry and prose because it is set to a beat that organizes the shape and movement of the words. Like poetry, music has a rhythm, but instead of just the beat of words, music has a melody, a harmony, and a vibration.

A musician uses pitch—the sounds moving high and low—and rhythm to create a message. Why does the avenue of delivery affect us so deeply? The thought is that the beat of music is like our heartbeat; we expect the rhythm because it is a rhythm that is already in us. I agree with theorists who call music a protolanguage, a language that appeared before we could speak; evolutionary studies support this theory. Other theorists say that music is merely enjoyable, but I think the function of music is far deeper and older than that.

The Cultural Bond

Of course, as in all things, the society we live in dictates what we find pleasing. The ear is trained to anticipate certain notes, and music fills specific societal functions. It might be a work song, it might be for rituals, or it might be a way to preserve history. In fact, as we saw in poetry (and as we will look at next in this succession), music is a way to bind a society’s culture, a way to pass on history, inspire, and create a social bond.

A Language of Emotion

Like all forms of communication, music has a language. It has syntax (the rules of order), phonemes (which we call notes), and various dialects that we call genres. But what transforms ordinary sound into music? The answer lies in intention and pattern. When we organize sounds deliberately—creating patterns of pitch, rhythm, and silence—sound crosses the threshold into music. A car horn is just noise, but that same pitch held and repeated in a pattern becomes musical.

It is, however, undefined in some ways, because sound interpretation varies from person to person. If I use the word “cat” in a poem, everybody knows to what I’m referring. But if I use a series of notes, each person listening will have a unique emotional reaction to them.

That is why music is so personal. Everybody will have a different Spotify list at the end of the year, and each person will have their own specific proclivities. These preferences make them choose one sound over another, or one song over another, often having a completely different reaction to those things compared to their neighbors.

A Primitive Foundation

There is an interesting theory that music is stored in a place of the brain that is primitive and distinct from the word-processing part of the human brain. It is foundational to what brought us into our modern humanity.

The video below is a TEDx Youth talk given by Sam Kouteili. He gives what I think is a succinct talk that captures the emotion of the answer. If you are interested, it looks like he is still experimenting with AI music generation and working with computer-based music models.